Ghosts Dance in an Empty House and Other Stories comprises forty-five narratives dictated by Coquelle Thompson, an Upper Coquille Athabaskan Indian residing on the Siletz Indian Reservation in Oregon, during the fall of 1935. Elizabeth D. Jacobs transcribed the stories from Thompson and selected some for intended publication. In addition to those Jacobs chose, William R. Seaburg combed through Thompson's field notebooks and chose a handful of additional stories, as well as several cognate texts Thompson told to Smithsonian Institution linguist John Peabody Harrington in 1942 and cognates from other Athabaskan and from non-Athabaskan groups in the region.
This companion volume to Pitch Woman and Other Stories: The Oral Traditions of Coquelle Thompson, Upper Coquille Athabaskan Indian, which collected Thompson's myths and folktales, focuses on Thompson's semi-historical tales, narratives of historical events, ethnographic texts, and personal and family stories.
Arvustused
"The volume brings out stories that have otherwise been kept in private academic collections and library special collections, making it now possible to return them to the Upper Coquille community and share them with a broader audience as well. This book will appeal to both scholarly and broader audiences, those interested in Upper Coquille storytelling traditions, and the Upper Coquille community."Jolynn Amrine, editor of Chehalis Stories
"This is a fascinating work. The original narratives, the background of the collector Elizabeth Jacobs, all combined with William Seaburg's commentary, make it a scholarly and engaging book."Charles R. Menzies, author of People of the Saltwater: An Ethnography of Git lax m'oon
List of Illustrations
Preface
Foreward
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter
1. Texts and Commentaries
Chapter
2. Semi-Historical Tales
Ghosts Dance in an Empty House
They Gambled
Night Walker
Night People
Two Experiences with Ghosts
Good, White Bird
Grizzly Power and the Umpqua War
Bears Are Avenged
Thunder
Wealth Encounter
Dead Persons Snot is Money
Ghost (A Fast Runner Races)
A Man Shot a Large Snake
Chapter
3. Historical Event Narratives
First Encounter with White Men
Killing Indian Doctors
A Woman Doctor Was Killed for Poisoning
A Man Was Able to Kill a Grizzly Bear
A Man Dodges a Grizzly Bear
Grizzly and Panther
A Bear Swears at a Hunter
An Attempted Raid
Slaves: Runaway and Hunchback
Klikitats and Slaves
Resuscitation
The Big Fire
A Bear in a Boat
Encounter with Baby Seals
Chapter
4. Ethnographic Texts
Hunting Beaver
Description of a Make-Doctor Dance
A Doctoring Session at Siletz (1)
A Doctoring Session at Siletz (2)
A Woman Doctor Doctors
A Girl Was Reluctant to Marry an Old Man
Sibling Incest
Chiefs Younger Brother
A Doctoring Session
Rattlesnake Doctors
A Suicide
A Man Visits the Frogs
How the People Obtained Flint
Chapter
5. Personal and Family Stories
Coquelle Thompsons Encounter with Ghosts
Coquelle Thompsons Grandmother Was Mauled by a Grizzly
The Seal Wife
Coquelle Thompson Is Doctored
Coquelle Thompsons Wife Is Doctored, Dies
The Old Hunter
A Hunt Coquelle Thompson Was On
Appendix
References Cited
Index
Coquelle Thompson (ca. 18481946) was an accomplished storyteller who lived through the Rogue River Wars of 185556. His tribal community was evicted from its homeland and resettled with other Athabaskan groups on the Siletz Reservation, where he lived for ninety years. William R. Seaburg (19472022) was a professor of interdisciplinary arts and sciences at the University of Washington Bothell. He was the editor of Pitch Woman and Other Stories: The Oral Traditions of Coquelle Thompson, Upper Coquille Athabaskan Indian (Nebraska, 2007) and the editor and annotator of The Nehalem Tillamook: An Ethnography by Elizabeth D. Jacobs. Elizabeth D. Jacobs (190383) was a therapist and ethnographer who conducted fieldwork among the Native peoples of the Pacific Northwest in the 1930s.
Jay Miller has a lifelong involvement with cultures and languages of Native communities in the four directions, with a fondness for the Northwest and earthen mounds. He has published works on Tsmshyan, Lushootseed, Salishan, and Mvskogee with the University of Nebraska Press as well as academic articles, book chapters, and dozens of edited tribal volumes. Laurel B. Sercombe is a retired sound archivist, having worked for the Ethnomusicology program at the University of Washington for more than thirty years. She received her PhD in ethnomusicology in 2001. Her publications include "Native Seattle in the Concert Hall: An Ethnography of Two Symphonies" (2016) and "History of Lushootseed Language Instruction" (2021). Susanne J. Young received her PhD in linguistics in 1983, specializing in comparative historical linguistics with an emphasis on Indo-European languages and the Indo-European verb system in particular. The title of her dissertation was "The Medio-Passive R-Forms in Indo-European." She worked in the Department of History at the University of Washington for twenty-nine years, retiring as the director of academic services in 2013.
